Hugh Grant and Ex Win Phone-Hacking Lawsuit

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Hugh Grant has never played a detective on screen, but he can sure play one in real life.

The British actor and former girlfriend Jemima Khan won a court order against a shuttered tabloid accused of hacking into the personal phones of celebrities and crime victims, thanks to a conversation Grant secretly taped with a reporter.

A High Court judge ruled on Wednesday that police must hand over any evidence that could prove Grant's and Kahn's voice mail messages were intercepted by a private investigator employed by Britain's News of the World or any other tabloid, Reuters reports.

Grant has been an outspoken critic about the phone-hacking scandal that has rocked Rupert Murdoch's media empire, News Corp. The actor caught reporter Paul McMullen admitting to the hackings on tape and published the transcripts in April, according to Bloomberg.

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"[Paul McMullen] started boasting about how my phone had been hacked and about all the dirty tactics used by News of the World, and about their relationship with the police and their relationship with five successive prime ministers, and I was revolted and astonished," Grant told the BBC earlier this month.

The court also ordered Clive Goodman to hand over notes from when he was a gossip and royal editor at the defunct paper, the Guardian reports.

Grant is not the only A-lister accusing the tabloid for illegal snooping. News of the World apologized to Sienna Miller for listening to her personal voicemail and settled for 100,000 pounds in damages, according to PopEater. NOTW investigators are also suspected for targeting the royal family.

Neither one of the British celebrities were present at the 20-minute hearing. Grant and Kahn, a newspaper reporter, had split in 2007 after dating for three years.